Jing-Ke Weng & Chip Celenza (BU) will serve as the guest scientists for the September Science by the Pint event. They will discuss with the general public on the topic of “Genetically Modified Organisms: A Plant’s Perspective”. The event will be on September 15th, 6:30-8:30pm at Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville (direction). Please join!

Jing-Ke Weng presented the 2016 Buchanan Endowed Lecture at UC Berkeley on Sept 7th. The Bob. B. Buchanan Lecture honors Professor Bob B. Buchanan, a longtime faculty member in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biologyat at UC Berkeley . Professor Buchanan did undergraduate work at Emory and Henry College and obtained a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Duke University. After completing postdoctoral research with the late Professor Jesse C. Rabinowitz in the Department of Biochemistry, Buchanan joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1963. He is known for his contributions to microbiology, photosynthesis and plant biochemistry. Speakers are typically young investigators on the way to achieving prominence in plant biology, and are selected by postdoctoral scholars in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology.

Jing-Ke Weng is selected as one of the eight recipients of the 2016 Beckman Young Investigator Award. The Beckman Young Investigator Program provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open up new avenues of research in science.

UROP researcher Andrea De Abreu joins the lab. Welcome! Andrea wants to become an astronaut one day. She will be working on a project that integrates metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, which are two essential technologies for future long-term space travel or colonization of another planet.

The team firefly is trilled to see that our firefly genome project is fully funded today! Many thanks to all 90 backers who have given your generous support to our project. This crowdfunding campaign has been an amazing experience for us not only to be able to raise the fund necessary for carrying the research forward but also to reach out to the general public about this exciting scientific adventure. It is so reassuring for every one of us to get connected to people from all over the world who share the same curiosity and passion about fireflies and are willing to support.

Fireflies have been casting their magical light on our planet for hundreds of millions of years. Now you just helped make it possible to unlock so many of their biological mysteries through sequencing their genome. Stay tuned, as we will update our research progress as this project moves along.